How the classical establishment reacts to Slippedisc

Brilliant piece of scathing honesty by Richard Bratby in The Critic:

Another week, another classical music funding crisis and if you deal with this shit for a living you know the pattern by now. The story breaks on the Slipped Disc blog, and the serious classical journos pause for 24 hours so they can pretend they read it somewhere else. The rest of the sector doesn’t hold back.

Social media lights up with fury, initially directed at whichever funding body has made the decision, but swiftly refocused (the mental gymnastics are Olympic-level) on the usual suspects: the Tories, Brexit, choose your right-wing bogeyman. Gradually the shock fades; the great and good sign an open letter, and underpaid, exhausted admin staff start picking up the pieces. Again.

So why did I get the feeling, this time, that people were looking at me? Birmingham’s bankrupt City Council has voted to abolish its entire arts budget over the next two years, and because I worked for years in the management of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and later wrote its history, colleagues assumed I’d have views — ideally loud, angry ones, rather than the resigned ache of someone who’s been through the whole miserable process so often it barely registers any more. But I mean: this is classical music….

Read on here.